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Public Holidays and Bank Holidays for Russia

The list of Russia bank holidays, national holidays and public holidays for 2008, comes from the Q++ Worldwide Public Holidays Database, the professional source of international public holidays long trusted by the world's foremost diary publishers. The information on this page is provided for private, non-professional, use. Qualified professionals can license data for 2008, 2009, 2010, 2011, 2012, and beyond. For details, please visit our licensing information page or

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19 Sep 2008 (USA Today) Taking its cue from the Russian President's wife, Svetlana Medvedeva (our post of June 20), the Duma (Russia's parliament) will soon consider a law banning from all Russian educational institutions any celebration of Saint Valentines' Day and Halloween. • 06 Sep 2008 (ANN News-Vladivostok) Officials at the annual celebration of the end of the second world war in the Pacific (VJ Day) in Vladivostok have called on the central government of Russia to recognize that event, in the same manner as it recognizes the end of the second world war in Europe (VE Day). • 20 Jun 2008 (Agence France-Presse-Moscow) Russia's First Lady, Svetlana Medvedeva, is chairing a comittee to celebrate July 8th as a Russian "anti-Valentine's Day", with emphasis on family, mariage and long-term faithfulness, rather than what she (and many in Russia) considers the shallowness of Saint-Valentine's celebration of short-term infatuation. If this year's first July 8 celebration is a success, Mrs. Medvedev has promised to make it an official public holiday in Russia. • 05 Jul 2007 (Fox Sports) A public holiday has been declared, on Thursday, July 5, 2007, in the city of Sochi, to celebrate the selection of Sochi as the site of the 2014 Winter Olympics. • 09 Jun 2007 (Tass) The Russian government ruled to move the working day of Monday, June 11 to Saturday, June 9, and to make Monday, June 11, 2007, a one-off public holiday. • 15 Dec 2006 Russia’s next presidential election will be held on March 2, 2008, despite recent media reports of a different date. Presidential campaigns will begin on December 1, 2007, Veshnyakov said on Thursday. Under the current election cycle, the next presidential election could not be held in Russia later than March 2008. • 28 Dec 2005 (VFBS) The Government of Russia has released the Russian Federation Governmental Regulation No. 813 dated 28.12.2005, "On the transfer of non-working days in 2006", which sets forth 2 bridge public holidays in 2006: Friday, February 24 (compensated on the 26th), and Monday, May 8 (compensated on the 6th), therefore resulting in 2 additional long weekends, February 23-24-25 and May 7-8-9, 2006. • 05 Jan 2003 (RIA-Novosti) Sergey Mironov, the Chairman of the Council of Federation of the Federal Assembley of the Russian Federation, and a close ally of President Putin, announced that he will launch an initiative to amend the Labor Code (last modified in December 2001) to make 31 December an official annual public holiday, so that "people have the opportunity to prepare thoroughly for the major holiday of the year". Labor Minister, Aleksandr Pochinok, called the idea "interesting" but suggested transferring an established non-working day to 31 December instead of creating an additional holiday. • 20 Dec 2001 (The Moscow Times-Russia) By a vote of 283/125, the Duma approved the new Labor Code which includes a provision making February 23, Defenders of the Fatherland Day, a new public holiday in Russia, while keeping the other holidays that Russia has observed over the past decade, but modifying the name of the November 7 public holiday known as the Great October Socialist Revolution as the Anniversary of the October Revolution/Day of Agreement and Reconciliation. • 12 Jan 2001 (ITAR TASS + Interfax Eurasia) Due to the continuing cold spell in Siberia and the Far East, on January 12, 2001, schools in Buryatia and the Jewish Autonomous Okrug were closed as temperatures dipped to minus 40-45 degrees Celsius, and the mayor of Vladivostok declared 12 January a non-working day. • More News Updates For up-to-the-minute news about public holidays trends and changes, visit our public holidays news and updates pages, or subscribe to one of our free email newsletters.

Governing Law: Official public holidays in Russia are partially governed (see below) by the 2006 Act No. 90-FZ of 30 June 2006 to amend the Labour Code of the Russian Federation (Text No. 2878, Sobranie Zakonodatel'stva, 2006-07-03, No. 27, pp. 7528-7627) which made wholesale changes to the public holidays in Russia, such as repealing the 1992 Ordinance No. 2981-I to declare 12 June a public holiday (Text No. 1393) and cancelling the November 7th public holiday. • Bridge Public Holidays: The principle was established by Act No. 2-FZ of 18 January 2001 to supplement section 65 of the Labour Code (Text No. 274, Sobranie Zakonodatel'stva, 2001-01-22, No. 4, p. 997) which gave the possibility for the Government to transfer public holidays some other days, joining them with the next non-working days. Technically, this Act was repealed by the Labour Code of 30 December 2001, but the process, if anything, is getting more and more systematic every year, although these bridge public holidays are often declared during the current year (and then sometimes only just before), Russia will sometimes work on a Saturday or Sunday in order to bridge a public holiday that falls on a Tuesday or Thursday. • Weekend Public Holidays: The occurrence of public holidays on a weekend is regulated by Ordinance No. 65 of 29 december 1992 to clarify several questions relating to the report of weekly holidays which coincide with public holidays (Bjulleten, 1992-11, No. 11-12, pp. 58-60), which provides that weekly holidays which coincide with public holidays are reported to the following day. • Since the October 6, 2006 amendments to the Russian Labor Code, the federal government may now change the days on which public holidays fall, but any changes must be officially published no later than one month prior to the commencement of the calendar year in which it falls. Changes may only be adopted during the current calendar year if they are published no later than two months prior to the date to which the public holiday is to be moved. • Traditionally, but not always systematically, if a holiday falls on a Thursday or a Tuesday, the adjacent Friday or Monday were moved on a Sunday or Saturday, thus making a long weekend followed by an extended, black workweek. • International Women's Day (March 8) was created by the Soviet Union to celebrate women’s achievements at factories and in crop fields, operating heavy agricultural machinery and breaking out from domestic slavery. Despite recent attempts by greeting card makers and florists, there is very little romantic connotation attached to it. Due to its origins, this date is predominantly recognised in the countries with a Soviet background, where it often, but not always, remains an official holiday: Albania, Azerbaijan, Belarus, Bosnia and Herzegovina, China, Cuba, Italy, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Macedonia, Moldova, but especially Bulgaria, Romania and Russia. In Slavic countries, yellow Mimosa flowers are the symbol of the day. • Victory Day (May 9) was proclaimed in 1965 by Leonid Brejnev shortly after his accession to the supreme leadership of the Soviet Union. This new holiday was intended to be more of a patriotic holiday than a marxist one . • Replacement of Nov. 7 by Nov. 4. In Soviet times, November 7 was the main public holiday commemorating the 1917 Bolshevik Revolution. Celebrations under communism involved huge military parades and demonstrations observed by Soviet leaders on Lenin's mausoleum on Red Square. After the collapse of communism, November 7 was renamed National Reconciliation Day, but was only celebrated by hard-line left-wingers, who continued to mark it by marching on the streets under red banners. In 2004, the Russian parliament replaced National Reconciliation Day with National Unity Day on November 4, a pre-revolutionary public holiday commemorating the liberation of Moscow from Polish troops in 1612, which ended decades of civil war and foreign intervention in Russia. • The second Sunday of March is one of the two universal election days in Russia in any particular year, along with the second Sunday of October, under a law introduced in August 2005. Under another law, however, elections cannot be held on a day immediately after a public holiday . • Sami National Day, not an official public holiday, was set to be celebrated on February 6th, on the occasion of the 15th Sami conference in Helsinki in 1992. The Sami national day is common for all Sami, irrespective of where they live, whether in Sweden, Norway, Finland or Russia. The national day was celebrated for the first time in 1993 . • Other Sources of Information For information not covered here, see the following specialized websites: Central Bank of Russia (Russia central bank), ASI Hot Spots (security-related world events: terrorist threats, political strife, strikes, criminal activity, aviation incidents and health outbreaks), CIA World Factbook (maps, demographic and economic statistics), Copp Clark (financial markets' trading hours, settlement holidays and currency non-clearing days), and the IFES Election Guide (information covering upcoming elections, referenda, electoral structures and past voter participation).

Observance : Any entry in the Observance column indicates that, in Russia, the holiday may be regional or non-official or limited to certain religious and/or linguistic groups, or begin at a time other than midnight. Note that religious holidays are included only if they are national public holidays, or if the national labour code has specific holiday allowances for employees of specific religions. For more information, see our pages on the religious calendars of the world.

Disclaimer
In many parts of the world, holidays are subject to arbitrary, last minute, changes by local authorities. While every effort has been made to present an accurate list of 2008 bank holidays, legal holidays and public holidays for Russia, we cannot accept any responsibility for any error or omission in the data presented above. You are therefore advised to verify the above dates with the embassy or consulate of Russia, before planning any trip to Russia. For last-minute updates to worldwide public holidays, visit our blog or subscribe to our free email newsletters.